Desert Heritage

by Zane Grey

  As the days passed, Hare learned many other things. For a while illness confined him to his bed on the porch. At night he lay listening to the roar of the river and watching the stars. Twice he heard a distant crash and rumble heavy as thunder, and he knew that somewhere along the cliffs avalanches were slipping. By day he watched the cotton snow down upon him and listened to the many birds and waited for the merry show at recess time. After a short time the children grew less shy and came readily to him. They were the most wholesome children he had ever known. Hare wondered about it and decided it was not so much Mormon teaching as isolation from the world. These children had never been out of their cliff-walled home, and civilization was for them as if it were not. He told them stories, and after school hours they would race to him and climb on his bed and beg for more.

  He exhausted his supply of fairy stories and animal stories, and had begun to tell about the places and cities that he had visited when the eager-eyed children were peremptorily called within by Mother Mary. This pained him and he was at a loss to understand it. Enlightenment came, however, in the way of an argument between Naab and Mother Mary that he overheard. The elder wife said that the stranger was welcome to the children, but she insisted that they hear nothing of the outside world, and that they be kept to the teachings of the Mormon geography—which made all the world outside Utah an untrodden wilderness. August Naab did not hold to the letter of the Mormon law; he argued that if the children could not be raised as Mormons with a full knowledge of the world, they would only be lost in the end to the church.

  Other developments surprised Hare. The house of this good Mormon was divided against itself. Precedence was given to the first and elder wife—Mother Mary; Mother Ruth’s life was not without pain. The men were out on the ranges all day, usually two or more of them for several days at a time, and this left the women alone. One daughter taught the school, the other daughters did all the chores about the house, from feeding the stock to chopping wood. The work was hard, and the girls would rather have been in White Sage or Lund. They disliked Mescal, and said things inspired by jealousy. Snap Naab’s wife was vindictive, and called Mescal “that Indian.”

  It struck him on hearing this gossip that he had missed Mescal. What had become of her? Curiosity prompting him, he asked little Billy about her.

  “Mescal’s with the sheep,” piped Billy.

  That she was a shepherdess pleased Hare, and he thought of her as free on the open range, with the wind blowing her hair.

  One day when Hare felt stronger, he took his walk around the farm with new zest. Upon his return to the house he saw Snap’s cream pinto in the yard, and Dave’s mustang cropping the grass nearby. A dusty pack lay on the ground. Hare walked down the avenue of cottonwoods and was about to turn the corner of the old forge when he stopped short.

  “Now mind you, I’ll take a bead on this white-faced spy if you send him up there.”

  It was Snap Naab’s voice, and his speech concluded with the click of teeth characteristic of him in anger.

  “Stand there!” August Naab exclaimed in wrath. “Listen. You have been drinking again or you wouldn’t talk of killing a man. I warned you. I won’t do this thing you ask of me till I have your promise. Why won’t you leave the bottle alone?”

  “I’ll promise,” came the sullen reply.

  “Very well. Then pack and go across to Bitter Seeps.”

  “That job’ll take all summer,” growled Snap.

  “So much the better. When you come home, I’ll keep my promise.”

  Hare moved away silently; the shock of Snap’s first words had kept him fast in his tracks long enough to hear the conversation. Why did Snap threaten him? Where was August Naab going to send him? Hare had no means of coming to an understanding of either question. He was disturbed in mind and resolved to keep out of Snap’s way. He went to the orchard, but his stay of an hour availed nothing, for on his return, after threading the maze of cottonwoods, he came face to face with the man he wanted to avoid.

  Snap Naab, at the moment of meeting, had a black bottle tipped high above his lips. With a curse he threw the bottle at Hare, missing him narrowly. He was drunk. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “If you tell Father you saw me drinking, I’ll kill you!” he hissed, and, rattling his Colt in its holster, he walked away.

  Hare walked back to his bed, where he lay for a long time with his whole inner being in a state of strife. It gradually wore off as he strove for calm. The playground was deserted; no one had seen Snap’s action, and for that he was glad. Then his attention was diverted by a clatter of ringing hoofs on the road; a mustang and a cloud of dust were approaching.

  “Mescal and Black Bolly!” he exclaimed, and sat up quickly. The mustang turned in the gate, slid to a stop, and stood quivering, restive, tossing its thoroughbred head, black as a coal, with freedom and fire in every line. Mescal leaped off lightly. A gray form flashed in at the gate, fell at her feet, and rose to leap about her. It was a splendid dog, huge in frame, almost white, wild as the mustang.

  This was the Mescal who he remembered, yet somehow different. The somber homespun garments had given place to fringed and beaded buckskin.

  “I’ve come for you,” she said.

  “For me?” he asked wonderingly, as she approached with the bridle of the black over her arm.

  “Down, Wolf!” she cried to the leaping dog. “Yes. Didn’t you know? Father Naab says you’re to help me tend the sheep. Are you better? I hope so . . . . You’re quite pale.”

  “I . . . I’m not so well,” said Hare.

  He looked up at her, at the black sweep of her hair under the white band, at her eyes, like jet, and suddenly realized, with a gladness new and strange to him, that he liked to look at her, that she was beautiful.

  Chapter Five

  August Naab appeared on the path leading from his fields. “Mescal, here you are,” he greeted. “How about the sheep?”

  “Paiute’s driving them down to the lower range. There are a thousand coyotes hanging about the flock.”

  “That’s bad,” rejoined August. “Jack, there’s evidently some real shooting in store for you. We’ll pack today and get an early start tomorrow. I’ll put you on Noddle . . . he’s slow, but the easiest climber I ever owned. He’s like riding . . . . What’s the matter with you? What’s happened to make you angry?”

  One of his long strides spanned the distance between them.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Hare, flushing.

  “Lad, I know of few circumstances that justify a lie. You’ve met Snap.”

  Hare might still have tried to dissimulate, but one glance at August’s stern face showed the uselessness of it. He kept silent.

  “Drink makes my son unnatural,” said Naab. He breathed heavily as one in conflict with wrath. “We’ll not wait till tomorrow to go up on the plateau . . . we’ll go at once.”

  Then quick surprise awakened for Hare in the meaning in Mescal’s eyes; he caught only a fleeting glimpse, a dark flash, and it left him with a glow of an emotion half pleasure, half pain.

  “Mescal,” went on August, “go into the house, and keep out of Snap’s way. Jack, watch me pack. You need to learn these things. I could put all this outfit on two burros, but the trail is narrow, and a wide pack might bump a burro off. Let’s see, I’ve got all your stuff but the saddle . . . that we’ll leave till we get a horse for you. Well, all’s ready.”

  Mescal came at his call and, mounting Black Bolly, rode out toward the cliff wall, with Wolf trotting before her. Hare bestrode Noddle. August, waving good bye to his womenfolk, started the train of burros after Mescal.

  How they would be able to climb the face of that steep cliff puzzled Hare. Upon nearer view he discovered the yard-wide trail curving upward in corkscrew fashion around a projecting corner of cliff. The stone was a soft red shale and the trail had been cut in it at a steep angle. It was so steep that the burros appeared to be climbing straight up. Noddle pattered into it, dropped hi
s head and his long ears, and slackened his pace to patient plodding. August walked in the rear.

  The first thing that struck Hare was the way the burros in front of him stopped at the curves in the trail, and turned in a space so small that their four feet were close together, yet, as they swung their packs, they scarcely scraped the wall. At every turn they were higher than he was, going in the opposite direction, yet he could reach out and touch them. He glanced up to see Mescal right above him, leaning forward with her brown hands clasping the pommel. Then he looked out and down; already the green cluster of cottonwoods lay far below. After that sensations pressed upon him. Around and around, up and up, steadily, surely, the beautiful mustang led the train; there were sounds of rattling stones, and click of hoofs, and scrape of pack. On one side towered the iron-stained cliff, not smooth or glistening at close range, but of dull, dead, rotting rock. The trail changed to a zigzag along a seamed and cracked buttress where ledges leaned outward waiting to fall. Then a steeper incline, where the burros crept upward warily, led to a level ledge heading to the left.

  Mescal halted on a promontory. She, with her windblown hair, the gleam of white band about her head, and a dash of red along the fringed leggings, gave inexpressible life and beauty to that wild, jagged point of rock, sharp against the glaring sky.

  “This is Look-Out Point,” said Naab. “I keep an Indian here all the time during daylight. He’s a peon, a Navajo slave. He can’t talk, as he was born without a tongue, or it was cut out, but he has the best eyes of any Indian I know. You see this point commands the farm, the crossing, the Navajo Trail over the river, the Echo Cliffs opposite, where the Navajos signal to me, and also the White Sage trail.”

  The oasis shone under the triangular promontory; the river with its rising roar wound in bold curve from the split in the cliffs. To the right white-sloped Coconina breasted the horizon. Forward across the cañon line opened the many-hued desert.

  “With this peon watching here I’m not likely to be surprised,” said Naab. “That strip of sand protects me at night from approach, and I’ve never had anything to fear from across the river.”

  Naab’s peon came from a little cave in the wall and grinned the greeting he could not speak. To Hare’s uneducated eye all Indians resembled each other. Yet this one stood apart from the others, not differing in blanketed leanness, or straggling black hair, or bronze skin, but in the bird-of-prey cast of his features and the wildness of his glittering eyes. Naab gave him a bag from one of the packs, spoke a few words in Navajo, and then slapped the burros into the trail.

  The climb thenceforth was more rapid because less steep, and the trail now led among broken fragments of cliff. The color of the stones had changed from red to yellow, and small cedars grew in protected places. Hare’s judgment of height had such frequent cause for correction that he gave up trying to estimate the altitude. The ride had begun to tell on his strength, and toward the end he thought he could not manage to stay longer upon Noddle. The air had grown thin and cold, and, although the sun was yet an hour high, his fingers were numb.

  “Hang on, Jack,” cheered August. “We’re almost up.”

  At last Black Bolly disappeared, likewise the bobbing burros, one by one, then Noddle, wagging his ears, reached a level. Then Hare saw a gray-green cedar forest, with yellow crags rising in the background, and a rush of cold wind smote his face. For a moment he choked; he could not get his breath. The air was thin and rare, and he inhaled deeply, trying to overcome the suffocation. Presently he realized that the trouble was not with the rarity of the atmosphere, but with the bittersweet penetrating odor it carried. He was almost stifled. It was not like the smell of pine, although it made him think of pine trees.

  “Ha! That’s good,” said Naab, expanding his great chest. “That’s air for you, my lad. Can you taste it? Well, here’s camp, your home for many a day, Jack. There’s Paiute. How do? How’re the sheep?”

  A short, squat Indian, good-humored of face, shook his black head till the silver rings danced in his ears, and replied: “Bad . . . damn coyote!”

  “Paiute . . . shake with Jack. Him shoot coyote . . . got big gun,” said Naab.

  “How do, Jack?” replied Paiute, extending his hand, and then straightway began examining the new rifle. “Damn . . . heap big gun!”

  “Jack, you’ll find this Indian one you can trust, for all he’s a Paiute outcast,” went on August. “I’ve had him with me ever since Mescal found him on the Coconina Trail five years ago. What Paiute doesn’t know about this side of Coconina isn’t worth learning.”

  In a depression sheltered from the wind lay the camp. A fire burned in the center, a conical tent, like a teepee in shape, hung suspended from a cedar branch and was staked at its four points, a leaning slab of rock furnished shelter for camp supplies and for the Indian, and at one end a spring gushed out. A gray-sheathed cedar tree marked the entrance to this hollow glade, and under it August began preparing Hare’s bed.

  “Here’s the place you’re to sleep, rain or shine or snow,” he said. “Now I’ve spent my life sleeping on the ground, and Mother Earth makes the best bed. I’ll dig out a little pit in this soft mat of needles . . . that’s for your hips. Then the tarpaulin so . . . a blanket so. Now the other blankets. Your feet must be a little higher than your head . . . you really sleep downhill, which breaks the wind. So you never catch cold. All you need do is to change your position according to the direction of the wind. Pull up the blankets, and then the long end of the tarpaulin. If it rains or snows, cover your head, and sleep, my lad, sleep to the song of the wind!”

  From where Hare lay, resting a weary body, he could see down into the depression that his position guarded. Naab built up the fire; Paiute peeled potatoes with deliberate care; Mescal, on her knees, her brown arms bare, kneaded dough in a basin; Wolf crouched on the ground and watched his mistress; Black Bolly tossed her head, elevating the bag on her nose so as to get all the grain.

  Naab called him to supper, and, when Hare set to with a will on the bacon and eggs and hot biscuits, he nodded approvingly. “That’s what I want to see,” he said approvingly. “You must eat. Paiute will get deer, or you may shoot them yourself . . . eat all the venison you can. Remember what Scarbreast said. Then rest. That’s the secret. If you eat and rest, you will gain strength.”

  The edge of the wall was not a hundred paces from the camp, and, when Hare strolled out to it after supper, the sun had dipped the underside of its red disc behind the desert. He watched it sink, while the golden-red flood of light grew darker and darker. Thought seemed remote from him then; he watched and watched, until he saw the last spark of fire die from the snow slopes of Coconina. The desert became dimmer and dimmer; the oasis lost its outline in a bottomless purple pit, except for a faint light, like a star.

  The bleating of sheep aroused him and he returned to camp. The fire was still bright. Wolf slept close to Mescal’s tent; Paiute was not in sight, and Naab had rolled himself in blankets. Crawling into his bed, Hare stretched aching legs and lay still, as if he would never move again. Tired as he was, the bleating of the sheep, the clear ring of the bell on Black Bolly, and the faint tinkle of lighter bells on some of the rams drove away sleep for a while. Accompanied by the sough of the wind through the cedars, the music of the bells was sweet, and he listened till he heard no more.

  A thin coating of frost crackled on his bed when he awakened, and out from under the shelter of the cedar all the ground was hoarwhite. As he slipped from his blankets the same strong smell of black sage and juniper smote him, almost like a blow. His nostrils seemed glued together by some rich piney pitch, and, when he opened his lips to breathe, a sudden pain, as of a knife thrust, pierced his lungs. The thought following was as sharp as the pain. Pneumonia! What he had long expected. He sank against the cedar, overcome by the shock. But he rallied presently, for with the reestablishment of the old settled bitterness, which had been forgotten in the interest of his situation, he remembered that he had g
iven up hope. Still, he could not get back at once to his former resignation. He hated to acknowledge that the wildness of this desert cañon country, and the spirit it sought to instill in him, had wakened a desire to live. For it meant only more to give up. And after one short instant of battle he was himself again. He put his hand under his flannel shirt and felt of the soreness of his lungs. He found it not at the apex of the right lung, always the one sensitive spot, but all through his breast. Little panting breaths did not hurt, but the deep inhalation, which alone satisfied him, filled his whole chest with thousands of pricking needles. In the depth of his breast was a hollow that burned.

  When he had pulled on his boots and coat, and had washed himself in the runway of the spring, his hands were so numb with cold they refused to hold his comb and brush, and he presented himself at the roaring fire half frozen, disheveled, trembling, but cheerful. He would not tell Naab. If he had to die today, tomorrow, or next week, he would lie down under a cedar and die; he could not whine about it to this man.

  “Up with the sun!” was Naab’s greeting. His cheerfulness was as impelling as his splendid virility. Following the wave of his hand, Hare saw the sun, a pale-pink globe through a misty blue, rising between the golden crags of the eastern wall.

  Mescal had a shy—“Good morning.”—for him, and Paiute a broad smile and familiar—“How do.”—and the peon slave, who had finished breakfast and was about to depart, moved his lips in friendly greeting that had no sound.

  “Did you hear the coyotes last night?” inquired August. “No! Well, of all the choruses I ever heard. There must be a thousand on the bench. Jack, I wish I could spare the time to stay up here with you and shoot some. You’ll have practice with the rifle, but don’t neglect the Colt. Practice particularly the draw I taught you. Paiute has a carbine, and he shoots at the coyotes, but whoever saw an Indian that could hit anything?”

  “Damn . . . gun no good,” growled Paiute, who evidently understood English pretty well.